The Blood-Stained Blade Ch. 123-125

Ch. 123 - Smoldering Embers

When the tide of bottle up evil thinned into a fog, they strode forward. Now the blade could study the details of the plain stone corridor and its rotted contents, and even without any obvious signs of violence, it could see that something was very wrong with the place. 

While it studied the etheric nature of the hall, its wielder whispered a few words and brought a small glowing orb of light into existence. The blade ignored it, though; it had nearly forgotten that the dark existed, or that Lucian couldn’t see in it.  

The way that it had seen the world for some weeks now was that it was woven into place by millions of glowing threads. Usually, the color and the brightness of that glow told it the most. It could see at a glance which of the souls contained in its ruby pommel was a greater soul, a human soul, or even a lesser monster soul based solely on how brightly they glowed. The same was true with mages and other heroes in the world. 

Here, though, since nothing glowed much brighter than anything else, it relied on the texture of that weave, and it was clear from those details alone that something happened here that should not have because all of those threads were wrong. Some were knotted so heavily that something terrible had clearly happened nearby, and others were so frayed that, well… It wasn’t clear what magic could have done that. It asked its wielder to avoid those rooms, though, because it worried that merely walking on such stones might be enough to make the whole thing collapse, or worse, cease to be at all.

Lucian moved through the centuries-old temple, leaving footprints in the dust, as they moved cautiously, exploring the smaller rooms and side passages as they went. The Ebon Blade could see that the polluted river of mana was surging up from the depths, through the main staircase even as the otherflows of mana descended in the same direction via the building’s megalithic architecture, but they were in no rush to descend, and looked for clues in the rooms that the weapon deemed safe enough to enter. 

Unfortunately, though, there wasn’t much to find. Centuries had turned almost everything that might be found to dust, and they found only splinters of wood that might have been dust, and piles of dust that might have been anything at all. 

“If only I had the spells, I could see the things that once were,” Lucian assured the blade, but it didn’t answer. It didn’t care about might-have-beens or almosts, and studied the walls of this place instead. While the stones were mostly blank, there were a few inscriptions and statues, and it studied each, hoping to trigger some latent memory, but it found none. 

This place is almost as empty as the mirror’s tomb, it thought as they moved from one room to the next. Emptier, really. At least that place had bodies.

Truthfully, it kept expecting that they would turn a corner and find a mangled corpse or two, but there was never anything there. If there ever had been, it had long ago turned to dust. 

They didn’t find much more on the lower floor, or even the floor below that. The only things that changed were that the air got fouler and the floor plan got smaller. Some rooms were labeled here, including one that read Forbidean Vault, but the thick door was ajar, and there was nothing interesting inside. 

They didn’t find anything interesting until they reached the very heart of the forge, and found that they were still lit, bathing the room in a ghastly orange light. It glowed so intensely that even as the blade studied it, it was half blinded by the power of the flames. That light should have illuminated the room, but instead it all but obscured the other forges, the statues, and some of the stranger decorations on the walls. 

It didn’t need to see anything, though, because it remembered, and as it looked at the room, images flashed through the Ebon Blade’s mind as it contemplated the scene it had witnessed in its earlier flashbacks. Except for centuries of age and neglect, nothing had changed. 

This place, the blade whispered. These are the fires where I was shaped and enchanted. 

“That’s not fire,” Lucian said finally as he stopped well short of the burning hearth in the room’s center. “That's…”

His words trailed off as the statue standing next to what the blade realized was not a fiery portal to hell opened its glowing red eyes and regarded them both. Through the blinding glow of the hellfire the weapon had barely been able to make out the details of the statue, but now that it awoke, and moved to one side, the Ebon Blade could see it was no statue at all; it was a living thing that had stood so still, for so long, that dust which had settled on it had turned it gray. That changed, though, as soon as it started to move, revealing swaths of red flesh beneath. 

That transformation was its least disturbing. The demon had posed itself perfectly as a man standing there in the robes of the Aethearchy; it might have even posed itself as a specific man, the weapon couldn’t say. That humanity evaporated almost as quickly as the dust, though, as the thing unfolded, for lack of a better word. 

With each movement, its robes separated into more and more arms. Soon, it was nothing but a pair of legs and a leering face, but that face was anything but human. It was too long, for starters, with a pointed chin and large closed eyes. When it finally spoke, though, and revealed just how alien it was, the weapon could feel Lucian recoil. 

“Visitors,” it growled, “And after so long. I’d almost given up hope. Have you come to renew the pact with blood?”

Those words were not spoken from its mouth, as any normal person might have expected, for its mouth contained only a giant eyeball. Instead, teeth-filled mouths hid behind both his eyelids, and when they opened, they spoke together in a disturbing syncopation that was disturbing, even for the Ebon Blade.

“Pact?” Lucian asked in confusion as he tightened his grip on the weapon’s hilt. “No, we’ve come to learn more about this place.”

“Why bother?” the demon asked. “Even if you do… Even if you swear to the pact and bring me the finest souls, I’d be hard pressed to forge you a finer weapon than that.”

As it spoke, the demon’s arms twitched restlessly. At first, the weapon thought it was just chaotic movement, but as it studied the confused motions, it could see that most of them involved something you might do to a weapon. There were some arms swinging invisible hammers, and others holding tongs or pumping bellows. It might not actually be holding tools, but its nervous ticks told the blade that it certainly knew how. 

“This weapon… have you seen it before?” Lucian asked. 

The demon looked long and hard. Almost all of its limbs froze in place as it studied the Ebon Blade from across the room. The blade could feel the thing's gaze roaming over it, and that only intensified as it produced other eyes, apparently from nowhere. It opened its hands and splayed its fingers to reveal an eye on the end of each finger tip. It opened other fists to reveal large eyes resting on its palms. At one point, the weapon counted fifty eyes boring into its soul, and it felt paralyzed by them.

Then, all of them vanished as it finally opened its mouths to speak again. “Forged in hellfire, tempered in dragon's blood,” the demon said, mostly to itself as it studied them from where it stood on the far side of the pit. “Soul scribed and deftly enchanted, too. I’ve seen it's like only once before, but even then… Well, its runes are too delicate for anything made here. The one I made was simpler. Where did you get this one?”

Lucian was terrified at that abomination, but somehow its question tore the answer out of him. “I… This is that blade. It has grown and evolved,” the blade tried to strangle that answer in his throat, but somehow the gaunt, red-skinned monster’s words overwhelmed its wielder just as its gaze overwhelmed the weapon. 

“Evolved? Interesting…” the hunched thing growled as it slowly straightened its back, gaining another foot or two in height. “Those deceitful mages had hoped for such a thing… But there were no signs. I considered it a crowning success, but they considered my work a failure.”

“I… What happened here?” Lucian asked. Looking around and gesturing at the quiet forge room.

At first, the blade wasn’t sure what its wielder meant until it looked around more. Only then did it see what he meant, and even it was appalled. The rest of this strange temple had been built of stone, but everything in this blinding room was made out of things that had once been people. 

The stones in the walls were people folded into compact cubes, and the forges were people that had been stretched to bizarre proportions. That was true of the chimneys and the anvils, too. Screaming faces were everywhere. Even the hammers and other tools resembled the twisted limbs of small children when it examined them more closely. After viewing all of that, the blade wasn’t entirely sure they hadn’t stepped into the pit already.  

“Happened?” the demon asked, cocking its head to one side. “Nothing happened here. All is as it should be. The forge fires burn, and the tools are ready. I need only a sworn pact and the souls to work with, and we can make whatever you desire.”

“Yeah, but why… Why haven’t you made weapons in so long?” the boy asked. 

“Time means little to me,” the demon answered, its hands starting to twitch again. This time they weren’t hammering, though, or pumping. This time, they held imaginary weapons and made fists that threatened violence. “And if you stand in hell completely, you’ll find it doesn’t pass at all like you expect it to.”

“I don’t think I’ll ever get the chance to find out…” Lucian answered, already starting to back toward the door. “It’s not really…”

“Oh, but I insist!” the demon yelled as it vaulted across the pit toward them, launching a dozen fists and claws on arms that were much too long in their direction. 

Ch. 124 - Dance with a Devil

The moment before it struck, the demon might have looked a little strange, but it had still been recognizable as some strange multi-armed forgemaster. For a minute or two, the presence of the Ebon Blade had been an inspiration, and the fact that it was itching to make something new was obvious. Moment by moment, though, and word by word, its form had changed as it shook free from the dust of ages, and its number of limbs had multiplied. 

By the time it had struck, it was obvious that it was going to, but even that certainty did not entirely prepare either of them for the thing’s voraciousness. Suddenly, it struck out, not with a limb or even half a dozen of them, but a tide of grasping hands and claws. 

Lucian swung wide and fast, shearing many of them off in a powerful strike that sliced through the rubbery limbs without resistance that didn’t seem to disturb their owner at all. While all of that happened, the weapon forced its wielder to duck reflexively to dodge a strike by a trailing arm that he’d misjudged. Even as all of that happened and he leaped away, more arms still chased after him. 

+39 Life Force. 

Against any other opponent, that would have been a decisive victory, but the demon seemed utterly unperturbed by the loss of eight hands, or the black blood that oozed from its stumps. “Give me the weapon! You lack the skill and the hands to appreciate such perfection! It was forged for me and me alone!”

A stray hand landed on Lucian’s leg, a few inches above his ankle, and in the half second before he whipped the blade around to shear it off, it squeezed hard enough to mottle the flesh and crack the bone. Even after it was cut free, it continued to hold on for several seconds more before it finally withered and fell away. 

+41 Life Force.
-18 Life Force. 

That leg healed enough to take the strain as they landed again, but next time they might not be so lucky. Still, the Ebon Blade would much rather the thing touch its wielder than touch it. The blade had come here looking for answers, but for the first time in quite a while, it decided it might have been better off not knowing about any of this. 

In that moment, the blade was certain that it never wanted to be wielded by such a thing. It might be a murderous killer, but there was something twisted and poisonous in the taste of its tainted flesh, and it would rather be wielded by a hundred orcs than a single demon. 

“Give it to me!” the demon gibbered. “GiveIt!GiveIt!GiveIt!GiveIt!GiveIt!”

As it did so, the blade queried the first mage it found in its soul. How do you kill a demon?

The answer that poured out of the young man’s mouth was rote and formulaic; he’d obviously learned from a book, not experience, but the blade didn’t let any of that distract it. Instead, it fended off attacks and kept its wielder aware of attacks from every direction as it absorbed the highlights, but there was no good news there. 

Demons are not easily killed, except by other demons who devour each other's souls with long-practiced ease. For anyone else, it requires catastrophic damage, which is nearly impossible given its proximity to a gateway. The dead mage explained. Instead, you should always try to banish them back to the pit from which they came. This is easily done if you have a man of faith by your side or know the creature’s true name. Otherwise, your options are limited. 

The blade cursed the answer as it sundered a dozen more limbs, but that did little good. So, instead of trying to slay it, at first they focused on attempts to escape, but even with the Ebon Blade’s help, though Lucian couldn’t reach the door to escape before one of the demon’s far-reaching limbs slammed it shut, and once they reached it, it could not buy him enough breathing room to open it. 

+186 Life Force.
-31 Life Force.  

The two of them fought defensively and moved acrobatically, but it was everywhere. In less than a minute, the room had transformed from a hellish forge into a red, fleshy spiderweb. The center still glowed, but that terrible portal was forgotten by all of them as they fought for primacy. 

When it became clear that evasion and escape weren’t options, they pressed the attack, trying to cut away the body that housed all of these limbs. It was a pitiful thing now that had atrophied almost completely as it unfurled into hundreds of arms, but even so, they could not reach it to strike the final blow through the thicket of flesh it had become. Even the few blows that scored serious hits on its withered torso were shallow, and the flesh was quickly replaced. 

+226 Life Force.
-27 Life Force.  

That wasn’t done by healing shut once more. That would have been too sane. Instead, each wound became a cavernous orifice that vomited forth a dozen new limbs to engulf them.

No matter how many arms there struck away, there was always more, and however fast Lucian moved, the demon moved even faster. Its wielder was bound by how fast he could move his legs, and whether he ran on the walls or leaped through the air, the boy simply could not keep up with a creature that pushed off of every wall and ceiling simultaneously, moving itself around like a puppet. 

“Mine!” it chanted in an endless litany. “Mine!Mine!Mine! It’s Mine, not yours! I will have it!”

After a couple of minutes of fighting like this, the blade was tempted to believe that their demonic enemy wasn’t even moving anymore. It was simply the world that moved around it. 

That’s what it had become. It was both spider and spiderweb, and all the time the battle raged, it shrieked its desire to possess the blade.

The battle was frantic and ferocious by turns, and sometimes the blade thought it had sliced enough arms free of their maniacal host that the assault began to slacken, but those ebbs never held for long. Eventually, in a desperate maneuver, Lucian was forced to toss the blade into the air and then whip it around him with magic at ever-increasing speeds. 

The blade did not care for the maneuver, but things were desperate. The demon was raining grasping hands down on them from all directions now, and its tainted flesh had piled around it up to calf height. 

“I will have it!” the forgemaster roared. “You cannot stop me!”

At this point, the Ebon Blade was no longer sure that it could, but it could think of no better option. As long as Lucian’s concentration held, the two of them could keep the thing at bay, but only in the way that a meatgrinder might, spraying ichor across the room such that any answers it might have found were entirely erased by the ride of violence. 

Eventually, some strikes started to get through the whirl shield, but the Ebon Blade could see that it was only because Lucian was letting them. He was picking the blows that were going just a little wide of where he stood and letting them get through his razor-edged defense so that they could hammer at the door with their full unrestrained power before he severed them. It was a clever strategy, and it made the blade appreciate its wielder’s intelligence all the more. Neither the blade nor its wielder could spare the moment it would take to cleave the heavy wooden door open, but they could waste their opponent's strength on the task as long as it took to batter their way free of the trap, and then make their way outside.

It might have even worked, too, but eventually their opponent adapted to the technique, and as the increasingly convoluted pattern became predictable, it used the timing to grasp its hilt for the first time. After that, things went downhill quickly. 

After the first hand landed on its hilt, it was followed by a second and a third. Each time it cut itself free, but each touch slowed it, allowing two more to take the place of the severed arm.

The weapon knew that it was all over almost immediately then, and while it warred with the mind of the interloper, those efforts weren’t nearly as effective as they might have been if the grip had belonged to a human. It had struggled with the bestial desires of an orcish wielder now and then, but this demon’s mind was entirely alien. 

“Yes!” it roared in triumph, completely ignoring the mage as its many severed limbs started to regrow. “With this, I can conquer all nine thrones and rule the pits myself! I can forge the world anew!”

As much as it was concerned about that, though, or the fact that the demon was dragging it toward the gateway to hell, it was more concerned about its wielder. Lucian had not been the best wielder, but he’d been growing, and after Evelyn’s tragic death at the hands of the throne, the last thing it wanted was to take the boy with it, and as the two of them fought for the weapon in a vicious tug of war, the Ebon Blade made a decision. 

“You cannot have it!” Lucian screamed, activating the blade’s powers one after another in an attempt to burn the grip away. Fire, poison, and lightning all arced along the weapon, but the demon barely noticed. 

Live, the blade commanded its wielder, using its influence to break the spell that continued to link them as the demon dragged it into the yawning pit. In retrospect, it realized that it was probably a dumb decision; how would Lucian fight his way down the mountain? How would he survive the beasts that filled the wilderness? 

It doesn’t matter, it whispered, answering its own question as it tumbled end over end into the fiery hellscape below. A chance at life was better than the certainty of damnation. The weapon watched the wound in reality slowly close above it, as the demon that had held it open for so long fell with it. 

“Mine!” the thing roared possessively. “With a weapon such as this, no Demon Prince will be able to stand against me!” A hundred hands caressed its hilt, slowly, but surely, combining, one at a time, until 

The blade first fought to resist it, but when that didn’t seem to do much, it tried to pry into its mind to get its name, status, or anything else. That didn’t work any better. Instead, all it could do was watch them fall further and further away from the portal that had brought them here as it shrank to a dark pinpoint.

Name: ?????????????????

Occupation: ??????

Toughness: X

Strength: X

Agility: X

Speed: X

Intelligence: X

Willpower: X

Morality: None

Bloodlust: Yes

Status: Wounded

Martial Skill: ?????

Armor Proficiency: ?????

Dodging: ?????

Athletics: ????

Circle: 4th

That rend closed long before it hit the ground. As they fell, its demonic wielder tried to transform its hands into giant, floppy wings to slow its fall, but there at least, the blade was able to do some good. It could not stop the thing from doing whatever it wanted, or from siphoning its power away to heal the bloody wounds it had spent the last ten minutes carving, but if it fought with all its might it could keep the thing’s form fixed, so it barely had the chance to change forms at all before they both impacted the world below hard enough to leave a crater. 

When that happened, the weapon embedded deep into a boulder to such a degree that its blade was embedded almost up to the hilt in stone. The demon that had been holding it all the way down with so many unnatural arms slammed into the ground hard enough to break every bone in its infernal body. If it had managed to hold on, the Ebon Blade would have been forced to spend thousands of life force healing it.

Unfortunately for it, its powerful grip was interrupted by the force of the impact, and it bounced uselessly and bonelessly away from it. When that happened, a few more limbs sprouted from the smear it had become and groped blindly toward it like bloody creeping vines. Unfortunately, they were unable to locate it before it gracelessly expired several feet away. 

+1 Demon Soul. 

All those arms, and no ability to fight through the pain, the weapon thought as it watched the thing expire. It had thrown its limbs around so casually in the depths of Ul-Magora, but a single miles-long fall had been enough to do it in. 

Ch. 125 - Welcome to Hell

The blade did not consume the demon soul, nor did it intend to, at least not right away. As much as it wanted to experiment with the thing, it looked at it with great suspicion. Unlike all of the other souls in its ruby core, it glowed darkly, as if it were the polar opposite of the souls it was used to, and the Ebon Blade did not wish to make a mistake. Instead, it set the issue aside and looked around the wasteland that it had fallen into. 

Its situation was bleak, but not as bleak as it had been the moment before when it was wielded by a demon. That, at least, is a small mercy, the weapon told itself, as it lay there, impaled in the very earth of this strange new world. Apparently, though, it was the only one. Besides scattered boulders and the corpse of the demon that had brought it here, there was nothing in any direction. It was entirely alone without a possible wielder in sight.

That wasn’t unexpected; what was, was that even the demon’s corpse didn’t last long. As the blade turned back to it after examining everything else it could see, it noted that the thing was already dissolving into the hellscape it had come from, making the whole place that much more trackless. 

-3 Life Force.

No, except for the fact that the lands around it sloped slightly up in one direction, toward some distant mountains, every direction looked the same. It would have given a great deal then, for a single landmark to show that this place didn’t simply extend forever, but it was granted no miracles, and nothing of the sort resolved out of the hazy air.

All it could see was the stony yellow wasteland, the green skies, and the occasional pillar of dark smoke dotting the horizon. Those must be the lakes of fire I saw from above, the blade told itself. Even those shifted often enough that they provided no clear sense of direction, though, and from one hour to the next, it felt like the whole hellscape was spinning around it. The Ebon Blade was the only fixed point, and beyond that was only nothingness and chaos. 

From Ul-Magora, it had seen not just wastelands, but oceans of fire and metallic cities. It had even seen giant behemoths marching through these wastes. None of those things were in evidence now, but it knew they were out there. 

But do I want them to find me? It wondered. It didn’t know. It didn’t want to stay here forever, but it wanted to be wielded by a deranged hellspawn even less. 

-4 Life Force.

While it waited, the blade studied the patterns in the tapestry of this new world, but they revealed little. The flows were alien, and the energies that flowed through them were sickly, smoky colors that looked nothing like the greens and blues of the world above.

-8 Life Force.

There weren’t even many animals, and it was hours before the blade could reach out and drink from a small eight-legged lizard that scampered from shadow to shadow. As soon as it tasted the thing’s lifeforce, it regretted it immediately. It was every bit as poisonous as the demon it had fought so recently. 

Still, it had nothing else, so it persisted in draining it as the thing became agitated, but it had no way to identify the source of the problem. The mortal equivalent would have died almost instantly at its touch, but it took several minutes before the blade finally killed the ugly creature. 

It would be much faster if I hadn’t weakened my drain so much for range, it reminded itself with a touch of regret. When it had been reaping lives like wheat, range was all that mattered, but this was an entirely different situation. 

While it considered this, the lizard’s corpse faded into the hazy air as if it had never been. The least demon soul that wafted out of it was even more bitter than the creature’s life force had been, and several hours later, it realized it had made a mistake in killing it so soon.

+8 Life Force.

+1 Least Demon Soul. 

I should have found a way to stretch it out and make it last, the blade told itself as it watched its Life force tick down with disturbing regularity. 

The weapon lost a life force every five or six minutes now, and though it had nearly three thousand Life Force, that treasure trove wouldn’t last for more than a week and a half or so. The blade lay there restlessly, impaled in the stone as it considered its options. Upgrades were counterproductive right now, and while it had a sizable number of souls, most of them it had no wish to devour. 

The archmages were as valuable as they were powerful; the mages were better spent answering any questions the weapon had, and the rest, well, it had no wish to devour the king or its former wielders just yet. That was much more personal. That left the demon soul, of course, but it was not sure it wanted to eat more of those than it had to. It felt tainted by the Least Demon Soul it had tasted, but there was no clear way out. Even if the rift far above it had not closed completely, it had no way of flying to reach it. 

The Ebon Blade was forced to wait for nearly a day before another small beast emerged. This one was a mangy six-legged wolf or coyote. It forced itself not to drink from it as quickly, tasting its life force only once every few minutes, and waiting until it looked like it was about to leave before fully consuming the malnourished thing. 

-124 Life Force. 

+12 Life Force.

+1 Least Demon Soul. 

The days that followed that one were some of the worst that the weapon could remember. Where are the lost souls and the demon armies? It asked itself. Why is it so empty and desolate?

It was like a man dying of thirst, who was desperately trying to ration his remaining salt water. The salt water wouldn’t save him, of course; it would only prolong his misery, but still he craved it. As its reserves trickled away, though, all it could do was attack those few minor demons who were unfortunate enough to cross its path. 

Sometimes it would see large, winged creatures soar high above it, and it would deeply wish that the poisonous things it had been snacking on left corpses behind. If only I could bait them into descending, it told itself. Then I would have something I could truly feast on.

There was nothing, though, and as the days turned to weeks, the sun didn’t set a single time. Though it couldn’t feel the heat and was unbothered by a lack of night, it still found the odd behavior disorienting. Eventually, it was forced to start consuming its remaining mages to stay conscious. It started with the weakest of those souls, but soon burned through them at the rate of one a day, or so. 

-2884 Life Force.

Perhaps the mages should have thrown me into hell the first time, the blade told itself as it considered its sorry state. This place is emptier than the bottom of the ocean. It was sad but true, and as the blade looked at its depleted reserves and tried to decide when it would feast on the Greater Souls of the archmages it still possessed, it dispaired. 

Fortunately, that’s when the imps found it. Bitter though they were, those little winged creatures were like a gift from above, and it devoured them as quickly as it could. When they had first appeared on the horizon, it had thought that the dozen strong group of dun colored creatures and the dust cloud that surrounded them were a weather phenomenon. It wasn’t until it got closer that it could see they were flying vermin. They weren’t much bigger than a bat, but there was an animal cunning in those beady eyes, and for some reason, they lingered around it, in a way that none of the other animals had to date. 

A few even landed on its hilt to explore the strange shiny landmark in that dull world. They flew away almost instantly at the touch of its magic, but they still circled it for hours before leaving, and the strangest part of all was that it hadn’t killed any of them. It had tried to. It had tried to drink them dry every minute they were in its range, but even small creatures like that were much tougher than their mortal counterparts, and with their quick movements and nearly identical features, it had been impossible to focus on just one or two.

+266 Life Force.

Still, for the first time since it had arrived in this awful place, it had drunk more power than it had burned, and no matter how poisonous it was, that was a minor victory. Even better, they returned almost a day later, this time, going the other direction. 

Unfortunately, they didn’t stop that time, but the group of red imp that were following them did. Some kind of tiny conflict was going on, and though it was on a scale that it would have relegated to warring nests of rats or packs of stray dogs, the blade still followed it as they came and went, if only because it had nothing else to do. 

The groups didn’t return to it every day, but three days after the frantic chasing started, it ended in a bloody final battle in its own little patch of desert. The creatures left no corpses as they fought, but the violence was something the blade could appreciate, even at that scale. It collected many Lesser Demon Souls that day, though it did not know yet what it would do with them. 

Whether it would consume their souls or not, though, it watched them fight and learned from that as best as it could. In the end, the smaller dung-colored bat men won, but only because one of them figured out that it could launch itself off the blade’s hilt, temporarily channeling the weapon’s strength to dash its opponent to pieces. The blade did not like being used in such a way, but it couldn’t stop it. Its mind was just as alien and unreachable as the forge demon’s had been. 

+14 Lesser Demon Souls.

+44 Life Force. 

That strange turf war fed it well, and it received several souls it could feast on later if it became truly desperate. After that, though, came the bad news. The victors had apparently decided that its hilt was the perfect anchor point and set about building a hive made of mud and dung on that very spot. 

+27 Life Force. 

Are they drawn to me, or just the way I reflect these endless days? The blade wondered as they buried it alive. It was a question that it eventually tried to answer by burning one of the Lesser Demon Souls it had collected, but the Ebon Blade regretted that choice immediately. 

Not only was it not able to understand much of what the thing answered, as it shrieked and screamed at the weapon. The most the blade was able to understand was something like, “We seek the light! All seek the light!” before it faded out. Far worse, though, was the message that followed, 

+1 Unholy Soul Devoured.

0/100 Divine Souls devoured.

Reflexively devouring the least souls had apparently done nothing to it, but choosing to devour the lesser souls was actively erasing its limited progress on the Path of Divinity. That was troubling, considering it was probably the most powerful weapon it had available to it in the world of the damned.